NAFTA v Trump

“Negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico meet Tuesday to start Round 6 of NAFTA negotiations. Through the first five rounds, talks have made no progress on divisive issues and President Trump threatens to withdraw.”

See NAFTA is close to falling apart with time running outWell, we’ve seen this week what a great deal-maker Trump is… and he’s cued up to break NAFTA soon. This is an election-year in both USA and Mexico so there’s going to be no end of posturing with nothing accomplished and Trump has promised to end NAFTA if he can’t get a deal he likes. Apparently, that won’t happen despite manufacturers all over USA telling him they want NAFTA to continue. He doesn’t care what damage he causes as long as he gets press and praise from his worshippers.

About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

Also, let’s address the elephant in the room here, which is the fact that California allows illegal immigrants to vote without showing a voter ID, which skewers the results bigly. Which is the exact thing the Electoral College was invented to address: states rigging the election process so they can impose their own president on other states.

304:227 is vast difference wouldn’t you agree? To simplify in terms you may comprehend, if the Solo EV went from 227 drivable miles to say 304. You would call that a major achievement!

Squeeaker?? Few thousand votes?? Again, you do not understand the U.S. election process Robert. Thousand of votes are not what mattered, but 77 electoral votes for Trump.

No one really cares about Obama or taft, unless they are taking a history lesson, quit living in the past.

Whoa!..stop the presses! You just wrote ” Saying somethingâ€™s great does not make it so.” and I agree, so when are you going to admit that Linux on the desktop was a total failure, along with ARM and the SOLO??

LOL, you talk about facts, but never mention any at all but hearsay ancedotal rumors.

That was not a landslide. That was a squeaker by a few thousand votes in key states. A record of “landslides” exists. Obama did much better. Taft (remember him?) did much better. It would be more correct to state that Trump was below average. Saying something’s great does not make it so. There are real facts instead of alternative facts out there if you just bother to read. I think if gerrymandering had not been rampant, Trump would have lost in a big way.

WhooHoo! That’s a good one. The Russia story has just begun. Mueller is digging up every bit of laundered money from Russian mafia, every favour traded, and the buck for all the Russian connections in his campaign stops in Trump’s lap. Ever wonder how Trump won with so little effort/money? Russia spent $millions pounding the Internet for Trump and guys like Grece fell for it.

Dear Robert, please read this monthly for the entire year. You will have to agree on all ten points in 2019.

Top 10 things we learned today:

1. Trump was never under investigation.
2. Trump did not obstruct justice.
3. Trump did not collude with Russia.
4. Russia did not alter the election outcome.
5. Comey leaked his own memo.
6. Loretta Lynch pressured Comey to cover for Hillary Clinton.
7. There was ample evidence to put Hillary in jail but Comey chose not to pursue it.
8. CNN and other fake news outlets have been lying / making things up this entire time.
9. The Democratic Party no longer has the ability to scream “RUSSIA” every time Trump tries to do something.
10. The Russia story is dead – any democrat who continue to push it will look foolish and insane to the American people.

How many jobs do tariffs kill, OTOH? I lived through both. All economies grew under NAFTA. Today, lots of folks in Iowa are nervous about whether or not Trump will kill NAFTA. “NAFTA has been a landmark trade success story for U.S. agriculture for more than 20 years, especially for U.S. grains. Over the last two decades, U.S. ag exports to Canada have tripled and exports to Mexico have quintupled, helping support the price of our products.”

Linux on desktop is non-existent. ARM is still not on the desktop and when it comes, it will be powered by Windows.

Oh boy, I had almost forgotten about Pog’s other causes (BTW I hate those “causes” that get presented to us as a great cause without those doing it adequately explaining why so).

Even if usage of Desktop Linux was mandated, why would that be a good thing? Last time I checked Desktop Linux still has the usual problem of “I have a barely 3-year old LTS and I can’t install the latest VLC”, the usual awful GPU drivers and the usual crap multimonitor support where you have a text editor open on the left monitor but the text search dialog pops up on the right monitor. Why is this a valid cause if you are a normal person and don’t care about yet another EULA? (hint: Your e-banking website, your car’s infotainment system and your TV’s firmware come with an EULA)

Same for ARM. With the latest chips from Intel and AMD (or both in some cases) why do I have to care? The ISA is yet another invisible (to the user) layer much like the kernel with the users caring only about the compatibility aspect where ARM fails miserably on the desktop front.

Does the man on the street have to care if Ford Motor Company loses some money as a consequence of Trump breaking NAFTA, considering itâ€™s the same Ford Motor Company that shipped jobs south of the US border instead of hiring US citizens?

This is Robert’s typical cognitive dissonance. Once he laments Trump’s tax reform because lowering taxes will benefit corporations more than workers. Next he laments Trump’s measures because they will benefit workers more than corporations.

It is tough to be Robert these days. Trump isn’t going anywhere and Dems are making fools of themselves every day. Solo is not coming. Linux on desktop is non-existent. ARM is still not on the desktop and when it comes, it will be powered by Windows. The future before Chromebooks is bleak at least. Tablets are dying to be replaced by 2-in-1s, which still run mostly Windows. LibreOffice is still a sad joke. Limux failed miserably.

Does the man on the street have to care if Ford Motor Company loses some money as a consequence of Trump breaking NAFTA, considering it’s the same Ford Motor Company that shipped jobs south of the US border instead of hiring US citizens?

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. Now that I'm retired I still use GNU/Linux on every computer in my home except the smartphones which run Android/Linux.

Lately, I've been giving lots of thought to the world I inherited and which I will leave to my descendants. I'm planting grass, trees, flowers and vegetables in my large lot and I've ordered a Solo EV. I plan to charge my Solo by means of a tracking solar array. Life is good if you have a purpose. I do.